✕. le marchand !

zacharie  of  mortis  ghost's  OFF. isola  aff.

[masquer]

    ✖.   ZACHARIE  :      off  by  mortis  ghost !

lemme see the colour of your [ISOLA RADIALE DIGITAL CURRENCY]

the zones’ one and only traditional item’s merchant, because they’re necessary in every video game.

sells you the finest wares at only the most reasonable prices. however, as current circumstances would have it, he’s fresh out of the usual stock for the moment. care for any luck tickets in the meantime?

potential customers can be rest assured: he’ll set up shop post-haste   ( and more than happily accept your dust. )

likes masks, and therefore always wears one. what’s beneath it, you ask? now that’s a secret.

can’t go more than 5 minutes without breaking the fourth wall. seriously, it’s kind of a problem.

knows more than he should, but we won’t worry too much about that.

“Nice city, don’t you think? It almost makes me forget that this is only MFRP.”

[purizone]

The fingers of that hand flex at his side absentmindedly, then curl into a loose fist. He turns his eyes from Zacharie's mask to look down the street from where he came.

"Yeah." But he didn't stay long. "They brought me there after I woke up."

It wasn't too far away, they're still in the neighborhood. Since Zacharie is in the area, too, he wonders if he's also been assigned this same ward. Wouldn't that be convenient.

The Batter hasn't had a proper home in a long time. The fleeting memories are quashed by that vicious drive to complete his mission; he can hardly remember what it was like. It doesn't feel right, and he doesn't imagine he'll be spending much time there.

Maybe. He still needs to sleep and eat like any living being would. A bed to rest in instead of sleeping propped up against an alley wall like he'd done before is probably preferable.

"It's down the road. Not far from here. I just left, then I found you."

[masquer]

Even without seeing him, he feels the Batter's gaze leave. They gaze down the street together until Zacharie's interest in it wanes. When he turns back, the man is an angular profile looking toward where he came, intense as always. And Zacharie takes the opportunity to study him for a moment, this unfamiliarity of the Batter staring ahead with no goal to reach, how strangely human of him it is. ❝ Down the road? ❞ Zacharie asks, his brows lifting behind his mask. ❝ That about makes us neighbors. ❞ It's a fortunate placement, he thinks. The other wards are entirely foreign in comparison to the zones they once called home. Perhaps the Batter will acclimate somewhat better here than elsewhere, as much as one can when brought back from the dead, anyhow. ❝ I had wondered how long you wandered before finding me. No matter the game, it seems I can't be too far. Eh eh eh. ❞

[purizone]

Hackles lower, fury simmering down. The Batter pulls his collar back up. There's still a flicker of frustration and confusion across his face, and instead of speaking he reaches his hand out. Slowly. There is no hesitancy, but he still watches the other closely. Even with the mask hiding his expression, his eyes say a lot.

"Yeah," he replies coolly. "It would be."

His hand touches Zacharie's neck, and then closes around his throat. The Batter had never laid a hand on Zacharie with the intent to cause him harm, and now is no different. He can feel the merchant's pulse under his fingers, his breathing under the thumb on his trachea that he lightly pushes down on.

Not enough to leave him breathless. Maybe he's just trying to prove to himself that the other is real, this is real; or maybe it's to make a point.

The Batter's hand falls away, his mouth twitching.

The expression on his face melts into something unreadable, stony, everything else compartmentalized somewhere far away. He supposes he'll have time to... figure everything else out.

"It doesn't make any sense," he states flatly. "I shouldn't be standing. But I'm no specter."

Is it even worth dwelling on?

"I'll have to look around."

[masquer]

Zacharie watches and waits. It is Batter that crosses the distance between them with a hand outstretched. The poise of its palm and appendages as it approaches is like a grapple, and though Zacharie draws the quick conclusion that its aim lies locked on his neck, he allows it to take him. His first thought is that the Batter's hand is cold against his much warmer skin. The second is that the fit of him, light yet firm above his airway, is strange though not unwelcome. There's no hostility in his energy, though the gesture itself is innately so. One closed fist is all it would take to strangle him. And still, Zacharie doesn't move away. For a moment, it's them in silence, his pulse moving thin and vulnerable from his throat into the Batter's thumb with their gazes united. Then, the Batter lets go, and Zacharie breathes again. His expression is indecipherable, though Zacharie tries to decipher it, regardless. It's not an act of caution, but one of intrigue instead. ❝ Not even slightly. After that, I can decidedly say you're not spectral at all and are most definitely of flesh and blood. ❞ Zacharie chuckles and runs an absent hand over his throat, before he looks out to the city beyond them.

❝ You'd best begin with your lodgings. It's where you'll be staying, free of charge—a complimentary service, I suppose, for dragging us here. Have you found yours yet? ❞

[masquer]

❝ I think he's getting along swimmingly, don't you? He he. ❞

[purizone]

Memories of what happened before he ended up here come in bits and pieces, a whirlwind of fur and violence, until his tender throat was torn open by feline fangs and he was left there convulsing, choking on his own blood, staining the white of his uniform.

His uniform is pristine, clean, pure. So much so he could almost believe nothing happened at all.

"My mission was struck down, at its end."

It feels awful to give voice to, the humiliation weighing even heavier. He had gotten so close, so very close, and all for nothing. The entire world, purified, could have fallen into peaceful darkness. Nothing left to fight. Nothing left to be scared of.

"That officious feline and traitorous puppeteer turned against me." Something flickers across his usually stone-faced expression. Frustration? Fury? His lips twitch. One gloved hand moves to touch at his throat with bare fingers. Just under the high collar of his undershirt, it's there: an ugly scar against the stark white of his skin, one evidently caused by animal teeth and claws. "And killed me."

He pulls his collar down enough for the merchant to see.

Coldly, accusatorily, he says, "What about you? Will you turn against me, too?"

Zacharie and that damned cat had been such good friends, after all.

[masquer]

Their memories are the same, then. Zacharie's silence feels more complex—heavier to him, too—as he grapples with several thoughts at once. It is some relief to know that they recall the end the same way, though it's comparatively meager in the shadow of his subsequent realization that this means, somehow, the Batter has returned from the dead. It was his same corpse that Zacharie stood over when the world remained lifelessly alive, only reanimated by the powers of the new one they see themselves in now. His same absence that Zacharie had felt once he was left to exist in it. The proof is in the scar on his neck that he exposes by pulling down his collar. And as the Batter stares him in the face, cold with rage, Zacharie could almost think him like a vengeful spectre—a bitter irony to his holy purpose. ❝ … No, ❞ Zacharie finally answers. ❝ I was never your adversary. ❞ Nor was he ever intended to be. He's known his role from the beginning; that they've transcended the barriers of their world and its rules matters little to him.

❝ I do believe I saw you to the very end of your journey. To betray you now would be unreasonable, wouldn't you agree? ❞

[masquer]

( OOC. ) those starters Will be coming this next week!!! i've been a little busy, but this guy's up and at 'em and dusted off so i'm eager to tackle them once i'm back from my weekend absence!

[purizone]

It's hard to say if he ever fully trusted the merchant. Their conversations had been fine, mostly professional; Zacharie had been the friendly one. He never pried too much. The Batter appreciated that. But trust was in short supply. Still, he had a mission to complete then, and he was willing to cough up the credits in exchange for things that made his job easier. Maybe he'd come to enjoy the merchant's company, in a sense. As much as someone like him could. Everyone needed a break sometimes.

Zacharie's presence makes him wonder about his own purpose here. He's been stripped of his weapons, most of his competences, dropped into a world so unlike the one he's known, and left without a guide, but this one person he did know was here. Is he meant to purify this place, as well? Did something, someone pluck him from the endless void to continue his holy mission?

But his puppeteer isn't here. The strings have been cut.

"Where are we?" The Batter asks. The device in his pocket had said Spirale, located on Radial Island. This zone was called Fibonacci, like the mathematician.

Beyond that, it was a mystery. They didn't breathe smoke here, there were no rivers of plastic or meat, the ground and buildings weren't all metal. People looked different from one another. There was grass, trees, dirt, things he'd never seen before, he doesn't think.

His bottom pair of eyes fall shut, but the other pair remain fixated on Zacharie.

"I don't know how I got here."

One moment he's struck down by the killing blow; the next, well...

[masquer]

The Batter was never one for words. That he neglects a greeting entirely is very much like him, and so Zacharie chuckles, the sound his signature, as he stands aside so that the Batter may overlook Fibonacci himself. ❝ The shorter answer would be the city of Spirale, on Radiale Island. Where we stand now is the Zone known as Fibonacci. They call them, instead, wards. ❞ Zacharie dismisses the specifics with a wave of his hand, as though it were nothing of great importance. ❝ But that is hardly what you mean. Right now, names are effectively meaningless. Without knowing the basics, it may as well be nonsense. ❞ Through the eye-holes of his mask, the merchant brings his gaze toward the people he had been watching moments before the Batter's arrival. They are, in essence, the city. Without them, it could hardly be considered a world at all. ❝ We're in something of a hub. Most of the residents are just like you and me—pulled past the boundaries of our respective worlds and dropped here, in another altogether. As for why… Well, I'm afraid that's as far as my knowledge reaches at the moment. Eh eh eh. ❞ The conversation lulls—though it was rather one-sided to begin with, as is often the case when the Batter is one's conversation partner—and Zacharie's jovial nature dims somewhat. The four eyes locked on him have closed to a mere two, less fraught though still expectant, and Zacharie knows he has to ask it to answer him.

❝ To provide you with any clue, I'd have to ask what it is you last remember. Not everyone arrives in… ❞ His wording sees some amendment. ❝ The same way. ❞

[purizone]

You can cause enough damage with any object if you swing it hard enough.

However, the green plastic bat is unpleasant to look at and embarrassing to hold. He drops it into a confused child's hands as he walks the neighborhood, having not lingered in his newly-assigned lodging for very long.

The "cell phone" they gave him is in his back pocket, untouched after he rather quickly figured out how to use it. He doesn't know just what this place is, why he's been brought here, and if he's even alive. He'd been struck down, humiliated, abandoned by his ally. That former ally is no longer here, he can tell by the way there's no tug in his head, his limbs; no voice that isn't his own floating around his skull, telling him how to proceed.

...Well, that gives him more freedom to do what he pleases, then.

And through his aimless wandering he sees something, someone, who looks so ordinary but still stands out in the fact that he is so familiar. The devil he knows.

A few heavy steps and he's hovering behind Zacharie, all eyes open, staring down at him with... curiosity, maybe; it's hard to tell, the rest of his expression is rather stony.

"You're here, too," is all he says.

@masquer hi :3

[masquer]

To this voice, Zacharie does not flinch but instead tilts an ear. His recognition had been instant—few walked with steps so heavy, and even fewer supposedly guided by faith. The shadow of a baseball hat's sloping bill cast over him is all the confirmation he needs, and so the merchant hums, a smile beneath his mask. ❝ But of course. I told you once before: I'll always find myself in places you're going to visit before you arrive. Someway or another. ❞ In their world or some other, true to his word. Zacharie shrugs on his backpack and turns away from this overlook of the city, where people move about like countless ants. The space reminds him of the highest point in Zone 2, only not nearly so high as the library there. And yet, the residents themselves could still almost be Elsen, swept up in their own mundane lives, all of them the same. The Batter looks at him with all four eyes, unblinking and seemingly at some loss. Zacharie wonders if it is perhaps the glaring absence of his strings: the Player he most often addressed, now nowhere to be seen. For a moment, he observes the novelty of it. A puppet freed of its puppeteer, roaming without aim. In the next comes nostalgia. The last time he spoke with the Batter, it was also directly, just like this. And then he had been slain, his mission failed, and the world was left to exist washed of its color. Everything was much bleaker after that.

❝ It has been awhile, my friend. I've waited quite a bit for you, this time. ❞

[vgbossthemes]

Visit Original Link

[masquer]

❝ Ah ah ah. Yes, you could say I have a particular fondness for cats. ❞ It's why he's stopped, of course. Zacharie could hardly resist the charms of a friendly feline lingering about the streets. He scratches the orange tabby right at the tail, to which it happily arches its back and purrs a stride against his pant leg.

❝ They remind me of an old friend. ❞ @charadrxxmxrr — i wonder if pablo would be a little envious.

[masquer]

❝ Today feels like a special occasion, no? ❞

❝ Perhaps it is an itch to hold a sale. ❞

[masquer]

( OOC. ) wao!! funny merchant man is in! i think we're gonna start off small and cap this at 3, though my castmate (and castmate in-laws, the underrunes hehe) are exempt from the cap!

[masquer]

bullying the merchant npc? now that's just unreasonable behaviour.

[masquer]

     ❝ Oho! I see the lot of you have a healthy competitive spirit. ❞

     ❝ But what is this? Might some you be ill-prepared for the challenge? Luckily, I might be of assistance. Lend me your eyes, my friend. ❞

     ❝ With this, you'll be fully equipped for any zealous booping bouts that should arise. What do you say to 300 dust? ❞

[masquer]

new border test, who dis.

[masquer]

( OOC. ) when i'm back in working computer land, i'll be updating my icons. so there might be a small delay as i migrate from one icon style to another and remake them all! sibylsource did an amazing job w zach's new border, i can't wait to show u guys!

[masquer]